Gujarat: Racket forging documents for overseas jobs busted

According to police, over 120 fake marksheets and certificates of different private institutions affiliated to the GSHSEB, 30 Indian passports, Rs 22.5 lakh in cash and equipment used in printing marksheets were seized.

The Anand district police on Tuesday busted a racket forging marksheets and certificates of Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) as well as other documents for overseas employment, running from a flat in Mangalpura area of the city, and arrested three persons.

On specific inputs, the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Anand district on Monday night raided the premises where the accused was running a consultancy firm for foreign education, police said.

According to police, over 120 fake marksheets and certificates of different private institutions affiliated to the GSHSEB, 30 Indian passports, Rs 22.5 lakh in cash and equipment used in printing marksheets were seized.

“We received a tip that Kanubhai Rabari who runs a consultancy office from his residence in Atithi apartments in Mangalpura of Anand, has been running a racket supplying fake marksheets and certificates to aspirants seeking overseas jobs. A raid was conducted and we received a number of files from the residence of the accused…,” said Ajit Rajian, superintendent of police, Anand. Rabari was arrested on Tuesday.

“On interrogation, Rabari revealed that he along with two Vadodara residents — Aditya Patel and Hiren Chandrakant Satam alias Sonu — were involved in printing fake marksheets and certificates of different institutes and colleges. The trio then used to apply for VISA of different countries on behalf of their clients using the fake documents. We arrested all three of them,” Rajian said.

All three accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 465 for forgery, 466 for forgery of public register, 468 for forgery for purpose of cheating, 474 for possession of forged documents shown as genuine and 120b for criminal conspiracy, even as probe is on to ascertain the authenticity of the passports.

“We have found 30 passports…. Probe is on to ascertain if they are fake because we had busted another racket of fake passports recently. We are probing if there is any connection,” the SP added.

Police are also probing if the accused had direct links with the Vadodara fake racket scam in which similar migration documents and examination marksheets were recovered on November 26. The kingpin of the racket was arrested by the Vadodara police on November 29.